Michael Jayston reads this taut, suspenseful novel from the master of spy fiction, John le Carre. Britain is in the depths of recession. A left-leaning young Oxford academic and his barrister girlfriend take an off-peak holiday on the Caribbean island of Antigua. Seemingly by chance they bump into a Russian millionaire called Dima who owns a peninsula and a diamond-encrusted gold watch. He also has a tattoo on his right thumb, and wants a game of tennis.

The unrivaled master of spy fiction returns with a taut and suspenseful of dirty money and dirtier politics. For nearly half a century, John le Carré's limitless imagination has enthralled millions of readers and moviegoers around the globe. From the cold war to the bitter fruits of colonialism to unrest in the Middle East, he has reinvented the spy novel again and again. Now, le Carré makes his Viking debut with a stunning tour-de-force that only a craftsman of his caliber could pen. As menacing and flawlessly paced as The Little Drummer Girl and as morally complex as The Constant Gardener, Our Kind of Traitor is signature le Carré.

A prolific author with millions of fans, and novels that routinely climb the bestseller charts, John le Carre is more than simply a genre writer. Myron J. Aronoff contends that le Carre's spy novels grapple with one of the most pressing political issues facing the world community today: what extreme–and often undemocratic–means are justifiable to protect democracy in this post-Cold War era? As such, Aronoff demonstrates that le Carre's novels use espionage as a metaphor for politics, and his unforgettable characters dramatize the classic conflict between individual sovereignty and governmental loyalty and power…